Vocal Tips For K-pop Fans #7: How to Use a Vibrato

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32 thoughts on “Vocal Tips For K-pop Fans #7: How to Use a Vibrato”

Hi Ahmin! Not sure if you remember me, but you helped me out a lot last time. So I was wondering if you could take a listen to my recent singing: http://www.smule.com/leeronald
(Please listen to “All I Ask” and “It’s you”)
What do you think about my lower and upper register? And is my mix still too chesty?
Thank you 🙂

Hi yes I do remember. Unfortunately the recording I listened to doesn’t seem to be included in this list anymore. ㅠㅜ
0:31 “Just play pretend” don’t be lazy, don’t throw the notes around. Also don’t use so much reverb, there’s too much echo for me to say much about your singing. You sound pretty, but you sound too tight and soft. I understand you’re singing softly, but “more than JUST a friend” that E4 wasn’t just soft, it was tight. You need to make sure you sing softly with an opened throat. Don’t close your throat to control your volume output. You sound pretty, the last chorus is supposed to be more powerful and the volume is just kind of the same as before. Don’t be shallow on the way you approach your singing, allow fulness in your voice. Allow power to take over. Your lower range is a bit too soft and muffled around G2 and below, but not bad before that. Your mix isn’t too chesty, it’s just tight. Your falsetto is a bit nasal, but it’s okay. Make sure your transitions are a bit smoother and more relaxed, the falsetto is fine on the ooh vowel but the mixed voice can sound pretty tight right before you get into your falsetto. The reverb sure helps, so it’s hard to tell you much when there’s so much of it going on. Just work on supporting and opening up more.

I’m not sure on how to fix my singing, as I try whatever tips others give me, but not all of them are pros, so I’m confused on what to work on and how to fix my singing so that it sounds better. Though I really love singing and try to put certain techniques to use, I don’t seem to sound very good. Do you have any tips on being able to sing better? Thank You

Nice recordings haha Very Interesting quality. Are you trained as a vocalist at all? I do hear support when you sing, you connect your vocal cords well which is very nice since most people struggle to keep themselves from using too much air. I still hear a lot of throatiness and shallowness, you remind me of Somi in quality of tone. It’s not airy, but it often sounds pushed. You have a the tendency to overcompensate proper support when attempting to add more power to your voice by pushing with more throat tension. Careful when you want to add dynamics, because you don’t need as much pushing. You need to keep your throat relaxed and the sound even without contracting the swallowing muscles as often as you do. I’d rather not rate you if you’re not trained/professional. From the moment you started singing one can tell you don’t speak Korean fluently or natively and you have an accent, which is different from a SouthEast Asian accent that I often hear from users here. It seems like an English-speaker kind of accent, which affects your diction and your vowel shapes, where they’re too narrow and tight when in Korean they’d be more opened. Also your accent causes you to keep your sound more closed and placed in your nose so really work on opening up on your vowels and keeping your sound in your mouth, don’t stay stuck on consonant sounds and keep the sound as opened as possible so you’re not too nasal.

Thank you so much! I speak French and I’ve only recently started singing in Korean so that might be why I have an obvious accent. I’ll work on my pronunciation and vowel shape and I’ll try to open up my throat more to stop pushing my voice as much. I haven’t received any vocal training apart from a small course on breathing technique and vocalises, but I’ve been singing on my own since a young age. I bought a mic to do covers so that’s why it sounds okay ahah

I think my pitch accuracy has slightly increased yet I still make slight mistakes once in a while OTL Does my voice still sound as pushed? I know my high notes need to be worked on but I’m not really sure how to properly belt ;-;

I’m not sure if I’d advise singing Blood, Sweat and Tears in the original key, it’s not the right key for your voice. Your harmonies are nice, careful with the runs, they need to flow more. Your 어 vowel in Korean sounds too much like Uh, it’s too narrow and closed in the back of the throat and lacks the full openness that the vowel is supposed to have. Even your Ah vowel is a bit too much in your nose, both 어 and 아 sound like Uh for you.

0:19 in Gorilla, pushed on the B4’s but that is a better shape of the Ah vowel than before because you’re dropping your jaw and not keeping your throat narrow in shape. But you’re still becoming shouty and using your throat too much. Tomorrow, same thing for the diction. It’s still a bit too nasal and closed. 1:54 You need to lift your soft palate more, the back of your throat lacks openness overall. You’re not as pushed so far but that’s also because you’re generally not singing high throughout.

0:12 Don’t drop your larynx, don’t let the sound feel too low just cause you’re singing low. In your chest voice you can get really nasal. I think singing in Korean is really responsible for you to sing very much in your nose throughout many of these songs. A lot of this is just narrow and nasal throughout. Oh there was this random G5 in For Life lol That kind of scared me.

Hello! I wanted to thank you for posting these videos for us ^^ They’re really helpful and I am in awe of your knowledge. You know so much. Your posts on vocal analysis never fail to amaze me. Thanks a lot for always making time for us ^^
I would like to improve my singing. I feel like my singing is really weak. Since I am not trained I don’t even know if I am doing something wrong while singing. Would you mind if I asked you to evaluate my singing?
Thanks

Please find below chorus of the same song. I uploaded this because my voice is kind of trembling here so I thought it would be really nice if you could give me suggestions on how to fix it. This also only me singing without any instruments by the end of the recording as I thought instrument in the background might make it difficult for you to analyze.

I think a big part of what I’m hearing comes from your diction, you need to open your mouth more. Also you sound like a soprano so singing this low mezzo song is a bit difficult, so your low notes are very quiet and muffled. Your verse is not clear, you need to sing more clearly, a bit more loudly, with a more opened mouth. For now you sound like you are half-cracking your voice when you sing, you are also a bit behind on the timing and singing slightly slower than the beat. You have a nice voice, it’s really pretty. Your pitch isn’t bad, there were moments of you being flat and again it has to do with how you almost crack your voice on purpose too much. I need you to pronounce things more clearly, drop your jaw more and use your lips to let your sound come out more forward, instead of letting it stay in the back. There are more issues but these are some major ones. Make sure you take smart breaths that make sense before you sing some of those lines. Try not to slide that much either, you were kind of sliding too much which made you sound flat more often and when you sang lower, your voice became very quiet as well. You sound a bit shy, which kind of comes off in your singing.

Ah! Thank you soo much. I am really happy. This is the first time someone has professionally commented on my singing. Thank you 🙂 I will make note of all these things. I’ll do my best.
Also, I would like you to ask you about some terms I couldn’t understand : what does sliding mean and does cracking mean the voice cracking when I go higher or voice kind of pausing while singing. Sorry I know I don’t make sense :’)

It’s hard to explain a slide so here’s a video where this guy shows what slides sound like.https://www.youtube.com/shared?ci=O0qc4GuDLvM
Cracking means air coming through like your voice stops and comes back for a second. Kind of pausing would be right.

Sorry for disturbing you, if you had spare time, i’d like to ask for a help..

I know that I still didn’t have decent singing technique, in fact, so far away from it (just hope you don’t get ear bleed after heard those vids) 😂.
But, I want to know, is this really2 sounds too flat/off tune? And do you have an input for me, how to improve it in the future?

I honestly don’t want to reply to your comment because you called me Michael. LOL jk But really..it’s definitely not Michael. It’s Matheus.
So this is obviously the first time I ever heard you sing. I think 2NE1’s song is definitely too low, it’s a low girl song for them and you are singing in a very low range having to even try to sing Eb2 which is a very low note. I think singing in Korean, a language that you don’t fully speak, gets in the way from your openness, diction and singing. You focus on pronouncing things as correctly and since you don’t speak the language, placing the sound isn’t as easy if nobody is teaching you how to place your sound.

I don’t think your pitch isn’t that bad, you’re mostly singing the right course of the melody and the right sequence of notes. The rhythm is mostly fine, but there’s way too much air going on when you sing by yourself. You are adding H’s all the time in the beginning of Divine. You aren’t really opened with your sound, you are mostly pretty nasal in placement and I’d suggest really working on proper airflow, vocal cord stretch and placement. I shall make a vocal tip video that focuses on proper vocal stretch.

Yes it’s the first time, and I hope you didn’t decide to make it also your last time 😂
Glad to know I’m not that bad, much thanks btw for spare your time analyze it, hehe..

May you explain, what is H’s that i sing in the beginning of divine?
I really2 love to sing, but it’s true that nobody teach me how to sing with proper vocal tech 😂
So, i’m just watching your vocal tips video recently..

And, do you think I’m a bass, baritone, or tenor?
I think i’m baritone, but i’m not sure, just guess..

So instead of singing the vowel ooo, like ooooo, you were singing hooohooohooo or haaaahaaahaa so you used the H sound to make your voice airier and to help you find the pitch of each note but you shouldn’t need to do that. I think you’re a baritone, most likely.

Wah, that’s so unintentional,, just realized it, then, yes i did it and became a such habbit 😂😂

Thank you so much for answering all my question, and if you don’t mind, i just want to ask the last two, hehe..

1. Since I’m 22 yrs old already, turning 23 this year, would it be possible for me to learn at least so i can improve a bit better?
With a note, since I’m an officer, I only can ‘ do rehearsal’, with watching your vid vocal tip, and trying to did it rarely..
May just 3-4 hours/week?
Even surely, i just sing all day long 😂